This is not a pro-Xbox or Nintendo rant, it is entirely intended to be anti-Sony. I wouldn't consider myself to be totally won over by the offerings of the other companies, just completely disillusioned with the tactics Sony has been using for years now.I am not trying to say that either Microsoft of Nintendo is innocent of anything I take offense to with Sony, only that Sony has done so much more of it (in my eyes) that I just can't justify giving them another cent of my money. I personally hope they fall off the console map and go the route of Sega.

A little history of me and my experiences with Sony: I loved my PS1 greatly, it had great games and graphics for its time. When the PS2 was released I was excited to finally get my hands on one, and even further was not interested in buying an original Xbox because Sony had all the exclusives I wanted etc., etc.. Then my PS2 went DRE on me. Then my SECOND PS2 went DRE on me. I have rarely played my third PS2 because I want it to survive.Great, a console I want to use but can't for fear that it will once again die on me. If it weren't for the fact I already had upwards of $700 worth of software, I wouldn't have purchased a second unit when the first died.

The current state of console sales was something I could have predicted. I've been playing games long enough to remember the Atari Jaguar, the Neo Geo, and the Dreamcast. I already knew the overpowered and highly priced consoles don't sell well, regardless of the fact the have technical superiority. Or even in the Dreamcast's case, a solid previously formidable company backing the product. The gaming public in the US just doesn't go for it. Somehow a company of Sony's size didn't have the market research to tell them this is normal, andI read interview withSony execs where they actually implied that the Americans were stupid for NOT buying their obviously superior product. I personally thinkTHEY must have been stupid to not realize the possibility this would happen with such a high MSRP.

They've claimed victory in the last gen console wars for years because PS2 sold x number of consoles compared to the Xbox selling y number of consoles. I would like to see a third figure, z - the number of consoles sold because users like myself had tons of games already purchased and the console just stopped playing them. Then adjust that for the number of people that only had to buy a single Xbox because it didn't have the ultra-sensitive laser eye in the DVD drive. Now that the PS3 has been around a while, it's becoming evident that it has the exact same problem with limited life span that the PS2 had. Throw in the high MSRP and I for one am not willing to gamble my money on a problem they don't acknoweldge and fix for free as Microsoft has mostly done with the RRoD. In fact, in order for Microsoft to be guilty of the same kind of behavior, they would have to have not already addressed and fixed the RRoD on current 360s, but it would have to be still present when they release a the next gen console themselves.

Sony blames us for not keeping the console in safe clean environment, protecting it from dust. The machine is designed to be hooked up to a TV, a device that is KNOWN for creating static eletricity and attracting the oh so lethal dust. Were we supposed to keep the console in an enclosed plexiglass box, treating it like the Holy Grail of home consoles? Maybe we should with the kind of money the expect us to pay for the thing in the first place. Maybe they should expect, address, admit, and fix the DRE problems like Microsoft did with the RRoD. Then again, maybe patent denial of the problem is their marketing strategy. "These aren't droidsyou're looking for, there is no problem with our disc drives, never has been..." Political behavior in game companies, what fun!

Then there is what I can only call Big Brother-ish behavior in their marketing and publicity. Last time they sold us on the backwards compatibility, our PS1 games were supported! We didn't need to leave it hooked up if we loved those games so much we still wanted to play them. Then they pulled the ol' switcheroo on us and said it was superfluous, as long as we had our PS2s we didn't NEED backwards compatibility.Apparently what they say is true as long as theycontinue to say it, thenwhatever they're saying now becomes the truth. I'm almost surprised PSN doesn't run it's own Two Minutes Hate with anti Xboxpropaganda.

I got burned with thePS2, Sony took me for nearly $600 dollars in consoles alone, then touted their through the roof sales. Then they didn't fix the problem while more than doubling the MSRP on the current console. I for one am not going tobe the guy stuck with a DRE PS3, thenhaving them ask me for$100-150 to fix their error. Xbox fixed my RRoD for free, Sony claims that the issue isn't covered under warranty because you didn't take appropriate care of their product. Throw in the fact that game developers are recognizing the sinking ship atmosphere revolving around US sales, and every exclusive I cared about save Metal Gear got itself a 360 simultaneous release.

Sony has treated us like idiots in words and sales tactics. They gambled heavily on astrategy thathas already proven to be a bad idea. Like Hitler ignoring the failures of Napolean, Sonyignored the failures of Sega (Note: I'm not trying to imply somesort of connection between Sony and Hitler - just comparing theintelligence of highly priced consoles to the intelligence of invading Russia in the winter given historic precedence). If Sony is to continue being a presence inAmerican homes they're going to have to reorganize their strategy, and the only way a companythat seems as arrogant asSony seems to will ever learn that is to lose big on poor marketing strategy. So even though I would love to play Metal Gear Solid4, and even though I figure I won't have a problem with DRE if I only play the games Sony has exclusively, I feel that Sony needs to realize WHYXbox and Wii are beating them in sales. It's not because the American consumer is stupid like they have implied at times, and it's not because the IPs coming out of Sony are in any way inferior to what the other consoles have. It's because the other manufacturers played safely, Nintento is the Little Engine that Could in regards to console manufacturers, and Microsofthas the market research to tell them it's only reasonable to aimso high in console performancein order to keep the price point down.

If anyone bothered to read through eight paragraphs and get this far ( I don't really expect anyone to read this), I know my points are a little repetitive and my structure is not well formed, this is mostly a rant for my own sake and was written mostly on the fly with points that have been thinking about for awhile. It gives me an opportunity to flesh out thoughts so in any kind of future discussion I don't get left wishing I had thought out my points better before hand. I just felt a little weird posting a rantish practice argument with no one in particular to Excel or Word, so my apologies if anyone expected this to be any kind of informative or journalistic pieve. I also can't figure out why Gamespot's software keeps removing spaces in my sentences, and I'm not happy with the sheer number of times it's happened in this single entry, so I stopped trying to fix them.